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April 02, 2017

If you find that you're having trouble shaking the concerns that you dealt with during your job time (or family time), listening to a music track can help you make the shift.

Experiment with what works best for you. For some people an upbeat tune is most effective, others prefer a meditative track that helps them to calm down and re-focus.

To energize you when you feel too tired to write.

A recent study looking at the use of music to empower athletes tested 31 clips and found the two that were most effective were "We Will Rock You" (Queen) and "Get Ready for This" (2 Unlimited), but you probably already have tracks that you know pump up your energy levels.

To evoke the mood that you want to create in what you are writing.

If you're writing a horror script or novel, it could help you to listen to a soundtrack from an existing horror film, for instance. (Some people find it too distracting to have music playing while writing, this is something you'll have to try and see whether it works for you.)

To tune in to the energy of your major characters.

What song or music track would best represent your protagonist's energy or world view? How about your antagonist? Listening to these before you write a major scene can be useful.

Any more?

If you have any other ways you use music to enhance your writing or creativity, feel free to share them in the comments section!

September 28, 2016

The five-hour rule refers to spending at least five hours a week on improving your skill, and it's something practiced by Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates and other very successful people, according to an article at inc.com.

The article's author, Michael Simmons, says he found that these leaders usually spent those five hours doing three things:

1. Reading. Oprah's dedication to reading is well known, and Simmons says entrepreneur Mark Cuban spends three hours a day reading.

2. Reflecting. This can take the form of meditation, brainstorming alone or with others, journaling, focusing on a particular issue while taking a walk, etc.

3. Experimenting. Simmons traces this back to Ben Franklin, who famously listed the qualities he wanted to exhibit and tracked his success daily. A modern example might be Richard Branson, who starts lots of businesses and quickly drops the ones that don't work out.

These days the unglamorous task of improving your skills, which often is not a lot of fun, tends to be overshadowed by stories of very young entrepreneurs and writers and artists who have huge success right away.

Unfortunately, for me and maybe for you it's too late to be a young genius, and I have to face the fact that i'm not even a middle-age genius. So continuing to try to improve is what's left. I'd better get started on this week's five hours...

PS: How to make sure you do it: I've found that the only way I consistently spend time on these kinds of tasks is to keep track of them day by day. You can do this on your calendar or whichever simple way works best for you.

September 20, 2016

When pitching a movie or a TV series, writers sometimes characterize their project as "X" meets "Y"--as in, "Romeo and Juliet" meets "Lord of the Flies."

There's a new approach to books that might be described as "TV writing" meets "publishing."

New publisher Serial Box produces ebooks in 13 to 15 weekly episodes. The first one and the series bible is created by one writer, who is the equivalent of the Show Runner in TV. The team works out the complete storyline, then writers compose chapters, alternating so the assembly line keeps rolling.

Each episode takes about an hour to read and costs $1.99, or you can subscribe and pay $1.59 each, or buy an access pass for all the episodes for about $20. You get both text and audio versions.

The first publication is a dystopian YA novel with a premise that sounds pretty familiar: 23 teens wake up after the Apocalypse and have to figure out what happened--while also being hunted by machines.

Wired.com quotes co-founder Molly Barton as saying that one of the ideas behind this format is that friends will find it easier to discuss the books because they will be reading them at the same time.

I can't say that as an author I'm very excited by this development; television necessarily is a collaborative medium, but in novels I value the author's individual voice. Of course, there have been book series before that were written by various authors under one pen name, and it didn't kill literature.

Even so, it'll be interesting to find out whether readers go for this format.

August 09, 2016

When you're stuck for what a character in your novel or screenplay would do next, there's a simple question that can help you decide.

As novelist Lili Wright ("Dancing With the Tiger") points out in an interview in The National Book Review, how you phrase the question is important. She credits it to screenwriting guru Robert McKee:

"Don't think, What would I do?

Or, what would the character do?

But: If I were him or her, what would I do?"

It's when you put yourself into the character's shoes and interpret the situation from his or her perspective that you're most likely to hit upon the most logical and true next action.

For instance, if you (the writer) came across somebody fell into some bushes and obviously is in need of help, probably you'd go to their aid. But what about your character's reaction to such a situation?

Let's assume your character has a good reason to want to stay out of the spotlight.

If you ask yourself simply, "What would the character do?" you might conclude that she hurries on, hoping someone else will come along and help the injured person.

However, if you imagine yourself to be the character and create that image of the injured person in your imagination, you might find that simply leaving the injured person and doing nothing else makes you feel too guilty.

As this character, what else could you do? For instance, maybe you'd hurry on but, keeping your head down, say to the next person you encounter, "I think there's somebody over there who's injured," hoping that person would choose to look and help.

Vividly imagining any situation from the perspective of your character allows you to tune in to their emotion as well as the logic of how they'd react, and that will make it more authentic.

July 18, 2016

I finally caught up with the film, Spotlight, on a plane trip from Los Angeles to London. It won the 'best picture' Academy Award this year. Sure, the acting was good, the story was important, and it was well directed, but what really impressed me was the way it used sleight of hand.

As you may know, it was about a small group of journalists in Boston who set out to expose the way the Catholic Church protected pedophiles. They start with what seems like an isolated case and gradually discover that the cover-up was worldwide and involved at least 90 priests in the Boston area alone.

NOTHING UP THEIR SLEEVES...

So where does slight of hand come in?

Well, usually in a film the structure follows escalating conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist. The problem for this story is that although the church tried to stonewall, to prevent the release of documents, and to exert some social pressure on the journalists, the conflict never really broke out into the open. The level of conflict actually remained pretty static.

Nobody fire-bombed the newspaper's offices, nobody threatened the lives of the journalists, nobody followed through on an implied threat to expose any dirty laundry in the histories of the reporters.

Because this was closely based on a true story, the usual dramatic devices were off limits.

MISDIRECTION

To replace the expected escalation, the script did a good job of keeping things moving and reminding us of the consequences if the campaign to expose the cover-up failed. For every roadblock the reporters encountered and overcame (sometimes with relatively little trouble), the script quickly produced a new obstacle.

Many of these were rather boring in and of themselves--needing to get a certain document, for instance, but the urgency with which they were all portrayed kept us watching.

THE VANISHING CHARACTER ARC

There's also no character arc to speak of--the Michael Keaton character comes to realize he was no different from the other journalists in the past who failed to pay attention to accusations against a priest, but it's not a big change. But again the script made the most of a rather thin bit of raw material.

A MODEL PERFORMANCE

If the aftermath of the investigation hadn't been so monumental, the script (by Josh Singer and director Tom McCarthy) would have lacked the weight required and its smoke and mirrors would have been discovered.

As it was, the film wasn't a big success financially, although the gross of $88 million is more than respectable considering the film's budget was only $20 million.

But for any screenwriter stymied by needing to create the illusion of escalating conflict when there's actually very little, it's a great model.

July 12, 2016

The Upworthy Generator is a tool that comes up with the kinds of clickbait headlines you see online all the time. It creates a headline and an image that actually has nothing to do with the headline. It's not that funny because the headlines it generates are no stranger than the "real" headlines you see online on Upworthy and other sites every day. (It's a parody site, it's not affiliated with Upworthy.com.)

Here are three from the Upworthy Generator:

"You Won't Believe the Troubling Music Video This Angry Talk Show Host Made"

"Think Things Used to be Better When You Were a Kid? Maybe You Should Listen to This Trailblazing Talk Show Host."

"What This Fearless Physician Did Is Genius"

Just to prove to you that these aren't any worse than what's on the real Upworthy.com site, here are three from there:

"This heroic man 'hugged' a terrorist. And it likely saved hundreds of lives." (Unfortunately, the terrorist was wearing a suicide vest)

"How a Woman Named 'Unbreakable Flower' Discovered Wrestling and Became an Unlikely Hero."

"How 5 Diabolical Parents Called Their Kids' Bluff in Hilarious Ways"

You can use such headlines, or parts of them, to prompt ideas of your own.

The first one, "angry talk show host," might suggest a short film or a short story about the home life of an angry talk show host. It could be funny because he's just as angry at home as he is on the air, or because he's totally the opposite at home.

"Think things were better when you were a kid..." could lead to a story set in the future, when somebody looks back to 2016 and how great it was compared to whatever's happening then. This could work as sci-fi, comedy, even romance (ah, the innocent days of Tinder, before Sexbots came onto the dating scene...).

The "fearless physician" headline might lead to a screenplay about a real or fictional doctor or inventor who was ahead of his or her time.

Of course, you can use the real Upworthy headlines the same way. For instance, "Diabolical Parents" could inspire a comedy horror film in which a chapter of the PTA is gripped by demons. Actually, Diabolical Parents would be a pretty good title for a movie.

It's always easier to come up with ideas when you have a starting point, even a random one. But whatever you do, if you use the real Upworthy site, don't click on the headlines or you may find yourself both frustrated and annoyed. That's why the parody site is much better--there are no stories to go with the headlines...unless you make them up yourself.

July 09, 2016

A feeling of having no control over a situation has been identified as one of the main sources of stress...which is a good reason to find ways to put your character into situations in which he or she has no control

As unpleasant as it is in real life (it's also been identified as a trigger for depression), it's an excellent way to increase the stakes for your protagonist. Of course, in real life sometimes people just curl up into a ball when under extreme stress, but that wouldn't make for a very exciting screenplay or novel.

Your protagonists will have to fight to regain control, and the less control they have the harder they will have to fight. The middle part of most novels and screenplays is a back-and-forth battle, with alternating gains and losses.

I've posted before about a useful structure for this--Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which often is represented by a pyramid with the base being the most basic needs (food, clothing, shelter) and the top being the most abstract and elusive need (self-realization). You can take your poor protagonists down the levels until they're fighting for their very survival.

I found this useful recently when trying to figure out how to add pressure on my protagonist in the middle of the story, so give it a try if you find the middle of your story sagging, too.

June 23, 2016

Sometimes a scene in a screenplay or novel just sits there, not doing what it's supposed to. It's an experience I've had more than once, and here are three things that I've found helpful.

iMAGINE CUTTING THE SCENE

If you cut this scene, would it affect the progression of the story? If not, it should go.

If you cut this scene, what essential elements would be missing?

Is there a different way to cover those essential elements? One option might be to incorporate them into different scenes.

CHANGE YOUR POV

Usually you're writing the scene implicitly or explicitly from the point of view of one of the characters. Take a few minutes to step into the shoes of each of the other characters in the scene. For each one, ask yourself:

what do they want in this scene?

how does that relate to what they want in general in the story?

is their behavior in this scene consistent with the above two?

what else might they do in this scene to try to get what they want? How would that change the scene?

Often changing viewpoints gives you new ideas that bring the scene alive.

INTRODUCE AN ADDITIONAL ELEMENT

What would make this scene more dramatic? Brainstorm whether you could add:

a new emotion (justified by something that happens in the scene, of course)

a new action (again, justified)

another character whose presence would cause some kind of tension or conflict (make sure they have their own reason to be in the scene)

Give one or more of these a try when you feel stuck, I hope you find them helpful.

May 11, 2016

Capitalism excels at innovation but is failing at maintenance, and for most lives it is maintenance that matters more — "We overvalue innovation; we undervalue the routine work that keeps the built world going. Innovation is “only a small piece of what happens with technology”. Most of what happens is repair and maintenance when innovation becomes infrastructure. Just as we celebrate innovators, so we should celebrate maintainers, “those individuals whose work keeps ordinary existence going rather than introducing novel things.”"

I think this applies to individuals as well as to society as a whole. For instance, there are lots of little things you need to do in order to maintain a writing practice, and they're not sexy or new. They include keeping good records, keeping up with what's happening in the field, getting enough sleep, exercising, and remembering to stand up and move every hour or so.

It also applies to continuing to write when you get to the hard parts, avoiding letting your inner critic stop you, and finishing and rewriting what you already have instead of moving on the more appealing choice of starting something new.

We'll never win a prize for doing any of those, but they help pave the way for the possibility that we will create something good.

May 07, 2016

One of my challenges in writing prose is coming up with good descriptions, because in screenwriting (which has been the bulk of my work) you tend to keep descriptions extremely short and don't get much into how things feel or smell. Before we can describe, we have to see (and smell, and hear, and feel). Visual perception is the topic of this five-minute illustrated TED-Ed talk.

The speaker is Amy Herman, who teaches, police officers, FBI agents, nurses, medical students and others how to develop their observational skills. Her main tool is art from all over the world.

(The "full" version of this lesson on the TED-Ed site is exactly the same)

Amy Herman has written a book called Visual Intelligence. The subtitle is "Sharpen your perception, change your life." Well, I guess getting really good at describing characters and settings could change a writer's life. I haven't read the book yet, but I'll return with a review when I have.

April 05, 2016

Can procrastination be a virtue for creativity?

Apparently it can, in moderation.

In a TED talk, organizational psychologist Adam Grant says a study showed that people who rush into doing things and people who wait until the last minute both have fewer innovative ideas than those who procrastinate for a little while but then get to work.

The period of moderate procrastination allows people to let the challenge or the task marinate for a bit, and often that leads to new ideas.

By the way, it was news to me that there are people who can’t wait to get started on an essay or report or anything else with a deadline. I don’t think I’ve ever met one. You can guess which camp I’m in (and I bet you’re in the same one).

He also points out that the first-mover advantage is mostly a myth.

Generally, you’re better off being an “improver”—one who lets somebody else pioneer and educate the customer, and then comes up with something similar but better. He cites the statistic that in business, first movers have a 47% failure rate, whereas for improvers it’s only 8%.

If you tend to rush to start or wait until the last possible moment, consider trying the middle path and see whether you get better results. I’m planning to try it myself…in a little while.

March 30, 2016

What should you write about in your novel?

In a Daily Mail article about a new contest for first-time writers, best-selling author Lisa Jewell shared this advice:

"Don’t write for the publishers and don’t try to second guess the market; it’s elusive and impossible to pin down.

Just write what’s in your head and what’s in your heart and give the reader a reason to keep turning the pages, whether it’s love for your characters or a need to find out what happened ten years ago or what happens next."

The importance of support when you write

Jewell doesn't mention support explicitly but it's obvious from her account of her own writing history that it played an important role. When she sent out the first chapters of her book, she had nine rejections but the tenth agent wanted to read the whole book. That motivated her to finish it, although it took another year.

That book was Ralph's Party, which got her a six-figure advance for two novels and eventually sold more than 250,000 copies the first year it was out. Her newest novel is The Girls. It will be available from May 6, 2016.

What if it feels impossible?

Jewell says, "Don't worry if it feels impossible. It's supposed to feel that way." The contest for first-time novelists

The contest has a first prize of £20,000 and guaranteed publication, and is free to enter. Details are here. Entries must be received by April 16, 2016, and if your novel isn't finished you must be able to complete it by October 30, 2016.